Mesovelia hackeri

fig. 1: Mesovelia hackeri, apterous male (length about 2.8 mm), from Tamaki Campus pond, University of Auckland

Taxonavigation

Ordo: Hemiptera
Familia: Mesoveliidae

Name

• Mesovelia hackeri Harris & Drake, 1941 Wikispecies link

Notes

• the first published indication of Mesovelia in New Zealand was by Towns (1978: 413, fig. 4), who reported a single adult specimen (evidently an alate) from a river/stream in the Waitakere Ranges, near Auckland
• the Towns (1978) reference was not mentioned by Larivière & Larochelle (2004)
• I collected a good series of Mesovelia hackeri (det. T.A. Weir) at Newmarket Park pond, Auckland City, in June 2002, as reported by Larivière & Larochelle (2004: 82), who published it as a first New Zealand record
• Larivière & Larochelle (2004: 82) also noted that 'a number of specimens [of Mesovelia] from the Cape Reinga area (ND; AMNZ) have been identified by J.T. Polhemus (Colorado, USA) as belonging to an undescribed endemic species'
• Polhemus had identified the Cape Reinga material as a new species long before I had collected the specimens from Newmarket Park, and it is very unclear if he had compared them with M. hackeri, so it could well be the same species
• Andersen & Weir (2004: 480) determined N.Z. material as M. hackeri from Newmarket Park (my specimens), from 'Mangonui Co., North I.' (from J.T. Polhemus), and from 'AK, Waitakera [Waitakere] Ra.' (also from J.T. Polhemus)
• the 'Mangonui Co[unty], North I.' specimens are likely to be from the 'Cape Reinga area' material, as Keith Wise of AMNZ used to label specimens using these county designations, and Cape Reinga is certainly in Mangonui County
• the Waitakere specimen may or may not be the Towns (1978) specimen, but at any rate Andersen & Weir (2004: 483) stated that M. hackeri 'is most likely the Mesovelia [mesoveliid] species reported by Towns (1978)'
• I have recently collected the species again, this time from the pond on the Tamaki Campus, University of Auckland (see fig. 1)
• M. hackeri is yet another example of a species that I have collected in Auckland City, but which has otherwise been largely overlooked (e.g. see Allodessus oliveri (?=A. bistrigatus) and Enochrus maculiceps, both of which I have also collected from both Newmarket Park pond and Tamaki Campus pond), and it is unclear how long it has been present in N.Z.

References

• Andersen, N.M.; Weir, T.A. 2004: Mesoveliidae, Hebridae, and Hydrometridae of Australia (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Gerromorpha), with a reanalysis of the phylogeny of semiaquatic bugs. Invertebrate systematics, 18(4): 467-522. doi
• Larivière, M.-C.; Larochelle, A. 2004: Heteroptera (Insecta: Hemiptera): catalogue. Fauna of New Zealand, (50)
• Towns, D.R. 1978: Some little-known benthic insect taxa from a northern New Zealand river and its tributaries. New Zealand entomologist, 6(4): 409–419.

Stephen Thorpe 02:45, 17 January 2011 (CET)